by K. C. Crowne
As worried as I was, I could see this wasn’t any kind of evil-genius sort of operation. Bryce had clearly never done anything like this before – he was the sort to give orders from afar and let his men handle all the dirty work.
“Then kill her,” the taller guy said, almost like he was talking about a wounded bird. “You got her tied up, you got a gun. One pull of the trigger and that’s the end of it.”
“No,” Bryce said quietly, shaking his head as he paced back and forth. “That’s not the end of it. I shoot her and blood everywhere, right? And blood’s hard to clean up. Then we’ve got the body to worry about. I can’t risk burying her on the property, so we’ve got to drive her somewhere.”
He was talking so clearly, so openly about killing me and doing away with my body. A wave of fear rolled through me, a feeling I’d never known before. I sucked in a breath and found all my courage. I had to save myself and my baby. “May I offer a suggestion?”
Bryce’s head snapped towards me. “And what’s that?”
“Let me go. Let me go and don’t kill me. I can tell you don’t wanna do it, Bryce. Just let me go and this’ll all be over.”
“Yeah,” he said in a disdainful tone. “Over until you report me to the police.” He shook his head. “No. We’ve passed the point of no return here. We have to kill you – that’s the only thing to do.”
Tears formed in my eyes. “Why are you doin’ this, Bryce? Because I wanted you to take better care of your horses? This is really the length you’ll go to?”
“It’s about more than that,” he shot back. “It’s about sending a message to anyone who wants to interfere with my business. You’ve been a pain in my ass for months, and if you disappear, people will get the message.”
“But…” I said, trying to fight back the tears, to stay strong. “I’m…pregnant. You wouldn’t just be killin’ me, you’d be killin’ my baby, too.” I expected sympathy, but that wasn’t what I got.
His eyes lit up with anger. “You get knocked up by one of those Walker jackasses? I know you been hangin’ around with Travis. Him and that shithead I was stupid enough to let work on my property.”
He pointed his gun at me, and my scream echoed as he did. But even through the fear I could see his hand was shaking.
“I need to end this now,” he said. “Right. Fucking. Now.”
I closed my eyes, waiting for the bang. But it never came. Instead, a commotion in the hallway interrupted. It sounded like men yelling and fighting.
Bryce lowered the gun and turned to his men. “What the fuck is goin’ on out there?”
The shorter man stepped to the door and opened it. As soon as he did, Adam and Travis rushed into the room. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
They barreled into the room, knocking the shorter man on his ass. The taller man, reacting quickly, raised his pistol and fired a shot. The bang echoed through the room, a hole appearing in the wall behind Travis and Adam instantly. They took cover behind one of the couches, Bryce doing the same near me.
“Skye!” Adam yelled. “Get down!”
Rocking my body, I tilted the chair over and fell onto my side, pain shooting out from my arm as I landed. A damn gunfight began around me, and I tried to curl my body into itself, to make my body tiny as bullets began to fly. The two goons took cover with Bryce, one of them raising his gun over the couch and firing off another shot.
The men took turns raising their guns over their cover and firing shots. It was loud, so damn loud. My ears rang with every squeeze of a trigger. As I winced, I realized the impact of me hitting the ground had jostled my restraints. I was able to slip a finger under the nylon rope and start to undo the bindings.
More gunshots rang out as the men exchanged fire.
“Fucking do it!” Bryce shouted. “Kill those assholes! That’s what I’m paying you for!”
Bryce, a wild expression of anger on his face, pointed the gun over the couch and fired off three quick shots. His aim was terrible; bottles behind the bar shattered into shards, dumping their contents all over the floor. The smell of booze mixed with gunpowder as the fight went on.
I was terrified – never had I been in a situation like that before in my life. As the men shot back and forth, I struggled against the restraints, desperately trying to free myself. It took some doing, but I was able to loosen the rope on my wrists enough to get my hands free. When I did, I went to work on the restraints on my ankles. Soon those were gone too.
“Skye!” Adam shouted over the noise. “Where the hell are you?”
“I’m free!”
Bryce glanced over his shoulder at me, seeing I was no longer tied to the chair. “Fuck!” he cried out before turning his attention back to the fight. He seemed to get that if he wanted to come for me, he’d risk getting shot.
“Come to us!” Travis yelled. “And stay low!”
My heart racing, my breaths short and ragged, I belly-crawled to the nearest couch and took cover. When there was a brief break in the gunfire, I crawled to the next one. The place was a warzone, and all I could do was focus on the next step, and then the next.
Before too long I was behind the couch near Adam and Travis, near enough to see them. They spotted me, and Travis held up his palm, indicating that I stay right where I was. Then he said something to Adam. Adam nodded and raised his rifle over the couch. He fired one shot after another. The gunshots from Bryce’s side stopped as they took cover from the barrage. Travis gestured with wide eye for me to come to him. I dashed from my couch to theirs, relief washing over me the moment I was next to them.
“Thank God,” Adam gushed, wrapping his arm around me. “Thank God you’re safe.”
“We’re not out of this yet,” Travis reminded him as he reloaded his pistol.
“We need to think of somethin’,” Adam countered. “Only a matter of time before one of us gets hit.”
Travis fired another few rounds before a focused expression settled on his face. “Skye, you ever shot one of these before?”
“My daddy used to let me take potshots with a twenty-two.”
“Then you get the idea,” he said. “Point and shoot.”
More gunshots from Bryce’s side.
“You know what covering fire is?” he asked me.
“I sure don’t.” I’d shot at paper targets, not humans. I’d never even been hunting.
Adam spoke, seeming to get what Travis was hinting at. “It means you just shoot blindly so they take cover – like what we did when you ran over here.”
“Right,” Travis said. “You shoot, and we rush over there and take them down. Don’t go stickin’ your head over the couch. Just raise the gun and fire in their general direction. Got it?”
I nodded, but I was scared as hell. Adam reloaded his pistol and put it in my hands.
“On three,” he said. “We run, you shoot.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to calm myself with deep, steady breaths.
“One,” Travis counted. “Two…three!”
Holy hell! Keeping my body behind the couch, I raised the pistol and began firing wildly. The gun kicked back in my hand, and I didn’t need to look to know my shots were going all kinds of wild. Adam and Travis burst from cover as soon as I started shooting. They rushed to Bryce, and moments after they were gone, I heard the commotion of men fighting. The gunshots had ceased, and I dropped the pistol and peeked my head over the couch.
The men were in a brawl. Adam socked the shorter guy in the side of the head hard enough to get him to drop like a sack of potatoes. Travis had the taller guy in some kind of neck hold, squeezing so hard the guy’s face turned a deep shade of red before he lost consciousness.
“Don’t…don’t hurt me!” Bryce shouted as they turned to him.
Fucking coward. I rose and walked to Travis and Adam, the air finally quiet and still, the scent of gunpowder still thick. Once I was by their sides, I saw Bryce on the ground, an expression of total fear on his face as the three of us loo
med over him.
“Come on,” he said. “No need to do anything crazy, right?”
“How’s this for crazy?” I asked, smirking. I raised my boot and drove it hard into his face, connecting with his jaw. His head snapped back, hitting the wall, knocking his ass out.
“Holy shit,” Travis cursed, turning to gape at me. He pulled me into a tight hug, and Adam wrapped his arms around us both.
“Are you alright?” Adam asked, his voice heavy with concern.
“I’m…I’m good,” I said. “I think.”
“We’re taking you to the hospital,” Travis announced. “No argument.”
The men let me go and looked me up and down. Seeing the two of them there, knowing they’d come to save me…my heart filled with joy.
“We’re never letting you go again,” Adam assured me. “Never.”
“We?” I asked.
“We,” Travis confirmed. “This thing with us…it’s crazy. But we’re gonna make it work.”
The fear faded as something else settled in. Was it love? I had no damn idea. Or maybe I did. Either way, I was with my men. Nothing could’ve made me happier.
Travis
Adam and I were in the waiting room at the hospital. I had a feeling Skye was going to be fine – Bryce hadn’t laid a hand on her, and aside from the raw skin the ropes had left on her wrists, she was free of any other physical injuries.
We hadn’t said much of anything to one another since we’d sat down. And I knew why – the whole thing was crazy. One second we were in a gunfight, the next we were in an embrace. The three of us. What the hell was this going to look like? Now that the more pressing issue had been taken care of, we were right back to where we were before.
“You think she’s gonna be alright?” Adam broke the silence.
“No doubt. She was shaken up but can’t really blame her. Hell, she got kidnapped. That’d be enough to get me on edge.”
More silence. There was an elephant in the room the size of my damn truck. Neither one of us knew how to approach it.
“She’s tough, though,” Adam commented. “Not a doubt in my mind she’ll be able to get through it.”
“You know I agree with that. Wish these damn doctors would let us see her.” I glanced up, as if I’d spot a doctor in the distance gesturing for me to come over.
“Listen,” Adam said. “We gotta talk about all this.”
And there it was. One of us had to bring the issue up, and I guess it was Adam.
“I know. We got a mess to sort out.”
Adam sat up, shaking his head. “What the hell are we gonna do? We both care about her, and she sure as hell cares about us.”
I nodded. “And we tried all the other shit –giving her distance, trying not to let her get too close. Or for us to get too close.”
“I know. But we keep getting pulled back into it.”
“And now she’s pregnant.”
Adam nodded. “That kid’s either mine or yours. What the hell are we gonna do about that?”
“We could…I don’t know, wait and see. Get one of them paternity tests, figure it out from there.”
“And then what? Whoever’s the daddy gets claim to Skye? That’s really how we’re settle this?”
“Doesn’t sound like a, uh, workable solution,” he agreed with a little laugh. “And more than that, it doesn’t take into consideration what she wants. What if she wants you, but the baby’s mine? Or the other way around?”
“We can’t let that decide things,” I decided.
More silence. A voice spoke over the intercom, and I listened to see if it was about Skye. It wasn’t. It was fucking bizarre. I’d always been the kind of man to never have any doubts, to always be certain of myself. But when it came to me and Skye and Adam, I was lost as a kid in the woods.
“I don’t wanna lose her,” I confided. “We came too damn close to just that happenin’. When Bryce had her…God, I don’t know what I would’ve done if somethin’ had happened.”
“Right,” he agreed. “We both feel the same way. We care about her, both want to make sure nothin’ bad happens to her. Neither one of us wants to lose her.”
I slumped in my chair, rubbing my hand over the back of my neck as I thought the whole thing over. What the hell were we going to do? Flip a damn coin? The next words out of my mouth seemed to come of their own accord.
“We could…you know, both have her.”
Adam turned his attention to me, his eyes wide with disbelief. “What are you talkin’ about?”
I put my hands out as I attempted to explain. “I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. I tried to stay away from her, and all I got was jealous. I’m damn sure if you did the same thing, you’d feel the same way.”
“Right. No doubt about it.”
“And Skye cares about us both. Imagine us standing in front of her, asking her to choose between us. How do you think that would go down?”
“Reckon she’d be as lost as we are.”
“Exactly. I want her, you want her, and she wants us both. So why not…both have her, you know?”
Adam laughed, a little confused. “Travis, I’ve known you for years and haven’t heard a shortage of insane things comin’ out of your mouth. But this might just be the most insane of them all.”
“I know it sounds crazy. Believe me, I can’t believe I’m even sayin’ the words,” I said, shaking my head at myself. “But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.”
“You’re forgettin’ about the baby, right? I know it’s a tiny little detail, but it’s there.” He was being a bit of a smartass, but I couldn’t blame him. “One of us is the dad.”
“Right. And we’ll need to take a test to find out.” He was quiet a moment. “What if we…I don’t know, just never took it?”
“Are you serious? Never take the paternity test? Never find out who’s the daddy?”
“And why not? If we’re both around, both there for the baby, does it really make a difference who’s officially the dad?”
Adam shook his head, running his hand through his hair. “So, you’re sayin’ we do some kind of…polyamorous thing? Is that what they call it?”
I laughed at the absurdity. “I mean, I think in those kinda things you can be with whoever you want. I’m not goin’ that far – more like we’re a couple, but with one more than normal. That’s not so crazy, is it?”
“It’s crazy, alright. The three of us together? About the damn craziest thing I’ve ever heard.” The more I talked about it, however, the more sense it made. “We’ll both look after her. And when that baby finally comes, he or she will have not just a mom and a dad to take care of her, but two dads and a mom. That’s just more love for the kid, you know?”
“That all sounds sweet as can be, but what if that kid grows up and realizes what kinda situation it’s in? Gonna start asking questions, and ‘who’s my real dad’ is gonna be one of them.”
“Sure, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. And if we’re both raising the baby from day one, I bet you anything he or she won’t give a damn who the real dad is.”
Adam let out a low whistle. “You know, part of me wants to sock you in the face for even suggesting something like this.”
“And the other part?”
“The other part thinks you might be right.” He shrugged. “What if me and you both bein’ with her’s the only thing that works? It’s sure as shit not conventional, but maybe we could pull it off.”
Before the conversation could continue any further, a middle-aged woman in a doctor’s white coat approached us. “You Travis and Adam?” she asked in a voice that was all-business.
“That’s us,” Adam answered.
“You relations of Skye Philips?”
Adam and I glanced at one another. “We’re…actually talkin’ about that very subject.”
Adam spoke up. “We brought her here, if that answers your question.”
“Well, she’s asking for b
oth of you.”
“Good,” I said. “How is she?”
“She’s still out of sorts from what happened,” she commented. “Got a few bruises here and there, some abrasions on her wrists, but other than that, she’s just fine.”
Adam’s eyes lit up. “That mean we can go see her?”
“It does. But like I said, she’s still a little shaken up. She’ll need some rest, and she’ll need some support.”
“Happy to provide,” I said, getting up.
Adam got up too, and we followed the doctor to the room where Skye was being treated. The doctor opened the door and there she was, gorgeous as ever despite all that had happened. We rushed into the room, and without thinking, I planted a big, wet kiss on her lips. As soon as my lips off left hers, Adam did the same.
“Alright, alright,” Skye said, smiling through it all. “I’m happy to see you both, too.”
I looked her over, relieved to see that other than some gauze wrapped around her wrists and a couple of small bruises here and there, she seemed okay.
“That…was a hell of a thing,” Adam commented.
“No kidding,” she said with a little laugh. “You hear what happened to Bryce and the rest of ‘em?”
“Got a call from my lawyer a little bit ago,” I told her. “Told me he’d found proof the Crawford cops had been messin’ with the dash cam footage. Charges against me and Adam are about to get dropped, and some other boys from a county over are gonna be leadin’ an investigation into what the hell happened.”
“And Bryce?” she asked.
“Locked up. And my lawyer said Bryce might have a shitload of money, but you can’t exactly buy your way out of a kidnapping charge.”
“Good,” Skye said. “The bastard deserves worse than that.”
“Enough about Bryce,” Adam announced, waving a hand. “How you feelin’?”
“Fine, I think. Still kinda loopy. But I’m glad it’s over.” She glanced at me, then Adam. I could tell what was on her mind.
“Skye,” I said. “Me and Adam, we’ve been doin’ some talkin’.”